


all the quiet nights you bear

by artemid



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: M/M, POV Baze Malbus, POV Second Person, angst and fluff sprinkled thoroughly throughout, hurt/comfort maybe, if plot were having a lot of pent-up emotion, in order of appearance: angst/porn/fluff, kind of organized drabble, kind of relationship centric, looking at you baze and jyn, losing a planet and a father respectively will give you some emotions definitely, this is an ode to baze malbus, we interrupt this plot for some sweet gay smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-04 17:20:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10284197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemid/pseuds/artemid
Summary: After much heavy, quiet thought and slow, hesitant conversation, whispered in the corner of a crowded cafeteria on Yavin 4, in deserted temple base hallways, on hospital beds, in a small, stolen shuttle, it is decided by six fools that it would’ve been alright if it had been the only thing to escape Scarif. As long as it made it into the right hands. It would have been a worthy sacrifice.Rogue One survives in the months after Scarif, acclimating to life working with the Alliance and the grief of loss. Don’t forget about that good, sweet angst.





	

The obliteration of Citadel Tower on Scarif flips a switch on planet life when the entirety of the Imperial base is thrown into the atmosphere. It doesn’t take days before the planet is unrecognizable, within weeks life has long past begun its decline into a new era of vegetation and deep, deep ocean life. And yet Imperial attention marches on without pause, a hole the size of a small moon scooped from the planet’s surface; this goes unacknowledged. Or so it is spread at the Yavin 4 Rebel base. 

It’s true that Scarif drifts through space, a small, ashy brown speck, but there is little credence in that it is out of mind. The sacrifice their great hand was forced into is not forgotten by the Empire. They stir, restless in their vast region of space, with an unclear direction, but as one moves when lining up a shot. It was no small thing to lose so much so quickly, first Scarif and then the weapon they used to annihilate it, the weapon that should have won the unending war. Though they try to save face. But the fact is, now they are more unpredictable. Now the waters are more agitated.

Neither has the Rebellion seemed to have forgotten their sacrifice, however. They fight a good fight with renewed momentum, after so many perish for one hope. 

Eleven things escaped the detonation that destroyed Scarif. One data file slipped through the gate even as the base trembled before the planetkiller’s green flare. After much heavy, quiet thought and slow, hesitant conversation, whispered in the corner of a crowded cafeteria on Yavin 4, in deserted temple base hallways, on hospital beds, in a small, stolen shuttle, it is decided by six fools that it would’ve been alright if it had been the only thing to escape Scarif. As long as it made it into the right hands. It would have been a worthy sacrifice.

Fortunately, it was not the only thing. Ten souls managed to make it out alive. Four soldiers who landed without hope, they survive. Just four. Five very important things also make it onto the Imperial shuttle in time to race from Scarif, all wounded in the conflict, but still breathing, pushing blood through their veins, some losing the dark stuff on torn, provisional bandages and onto slate metal grating. And yourself, you the lost protector, make it out alive.

You don’t remember making it out alive sometimes, you remember smoke and the salt of waves and a pain in your leg that rivaled the one dying in your heart. It must have been dying for the fight it put up. You remember his body. So large a thing for how small his form was as he laid in your arms. It was too solid to be him, leaving you. It had too much weight, such a strong downward pull, to be his in death. You didn’t and don’t think it unreasonable that when Chirrut dies all of him should go with it, as it was once rumored, a great Jedi would go.

He does not die on Scarif. You do not die. Rogue One beats it back, again.

They say Rogue One was more than lucky. Some pervasive thought of a long lost belief still thrumming uncertainly about the edges of the Rebellion. Your escape was nearly inconceivable. You, an old hand, were quite certain you would die that day your stolen Imperial ship landed on the enemy beach, beneath that sun so distant from Jedha. They say these things without thinking too hard. They’d rather not. Bodhi Rook’s body expands like an explosion at the smallest unexpected noise, but they don’t think or see because they cannot, because, you all know, there is more fighting to do.

They promote Andor to Major and exonerate Bodhi, accepting him at least officially. Jyn makes it harder for them and for herself. You and Chirrut exist in a subtle vaccum to yourselves. Either you are displaced or war heroes and no one can seem to decide on just where this places you in the Rebel base. 

Bodhi feels it, too, you know, though he is more used to stations like this, finds himself more easily camouflaged in the grease and engines of Rebel Starfighters (where, you think, he can work through his thoughts without anyone to witness). After the first week, he can be found in the hangar at any given time.

He shies away from other people, seems wrong-footed when he realizes Chirrut has begun seeking him out. Chirrut, who would never leave the fine sand of your world until it was being ripped from his feet, smiles Bodhi through the worst of it. Quietly he encourages talk of Jedha between, to your wounded dismay, the three of you. So three of an endangered people privately, on occasion, rebuild an image of their world as it once was.

Bodhi tells you it is different for him. Tells you he spent so much of the last decade of his life off-world. Tells you he hadn’t stepped foot on Jedhan soil in seven years before he defected. Tells you with his hands clamped around his knees, his eyes avoiding your faces, that he didn’t know he could still miss it. 

Days after Skywalker blows the planetkiller from existence, Jyn and Cassian have an argument. On a scale of minor to destructive, you would place it somewhere in the region of the quiet, vehement disagreement Chirrut had with you the day you attempted to explain away the end your faith. It wasn’t, of course, so much about your faith. Both of you knew that whether you trust or believe in it or not, the Force shall do as it wills, that you were not suddenly changed; it changed many things, but how could you deny something you knew in your bones. You had no faith. You knew the Force as true as any. You resented what it had revealed so harshly of its nature to a people so dedicated to reverence of it. No, the dispute had been for your soul. He worried for your soul in its grief. There have never been words to reassure the faithful in that regard. This argument has that way about it.

If looks could set fire, Jyn’s vest would burn.

You four stand in the war room. The operatives nearby with headphones and quick voices disregard the small storm charging, too busy to care about a few bruised figures unless you’re in the way. It’s been over a week since you died on and then survived Scarif. You’ve all only just recently escaped the medical ward. Chirrut leans next to you stiffly as Jyn Erso clenches her hands. You both stand out of the line of fire.

She’s not saying why she was speaking to the Rodian official in charge of non-essential persons transport. So Cassian has come to stand before her, blocking her exit. There is a tic in Jyn’s jaw and panic in her eye. You’re beginning to recognize certain signs as you watch. Cassian seems to have come to the same conclusion.

“So that’s it,” he says softly, eyeing her, gaze piercing even from where you stand. 

She wants to run. You don't find it surprising. The Death Star she was committed to ending has gone. Her father who built it is dead. The man who killed him is no more than ash. Her life has and continues to change into new shapes. Unmoored, her path is unclear to her. It does not take great observation to see her struggle to trust this Rebellion. She knows how to run. You understand this feeling, you met it once when there was a city you could leave and no temple for you to guard. You feel it now, around corners, in the shadows, behind the streaming sun filled windows of the Rebel base. 

She trusts the man before her, however. He’s the sort of man that war may have forced into sharp shapes, but lying low beneath is stronger hard metal. You saw it clearly that day on Eadu when Chirrut asked what sort of face this man with the gun had. Cassian trusts Jyn because he values loyalty, even if it’s hard come by. It’s only her that’s realizing now that Cassian has come in so short a time to depend on her as she has him. Who can say how much this will test it. But he’s still here. He’s still trying to convince her.

“It’s not over, Jyn,” he says to her.

“I know that,” she says, her expression calm beyond her eyes that simmer with desperation. Scared suddenly, now that the risk of losing something lays heavy and real on both sides of the line. “I _know_ that.”

Cassian takes a step closer to her and behind them spreads the green and white lit war room, casting them in shadow, unceasing with activity in the void the Death Star has left, the next defense, the next attack being organized at this moment as they exchange heated words lowly, too softly now for you to hear. You glance at Chirrut and see him straining not very subtly to catch the hushed argument, head turned to hear better. You nudge him and he pinches your arm.

“Decide what you’re doing here, Jyn,” Cassian’s voice carries to you. His gaze hasn’t left hers, too focussed to acknowledge any proceedings around them. She seems pinned by it. “I thought you already had.” 

Jyn looks at him, opening her mouth silently. You watch her flickering expression as she attempts here on the floor of the Rebel war room to pull herself back in and around a new choice, back from her decision to leave. But too late; he’s already walking away.

She stares at the empty space he leaves, then covers her face with her hand. “... _Shit_.” 

She’s no child, you think. She should– she can– decide this for herself.

It doesn’t quite sit right, though, as you watch. 

“Little sister,” you call, despite yourself. She glances at you. You see guilt strike again, somewhere low on her center when she looks at you. Chirrut could burn his focus through your skull, but you ignore the fool. After a moment Jyn comes a little closer, so that you’re not calling down the aisle.

No. She’s no child. None of these young rebels have been children for a long time. She looks at you, her gaze always intent, cautious. It’s too familiar a look. It’s a little embarrassing, staring at yourself in someone. Subtly, you shake the sensation off.

“You can’t avoid his anger,” you tell her because you think she looks like she’d wanted to wait for that argument with Cassian. Put it off until the last possible second. Jyn is brave, but that is rather cowardly. “He fights for many that cannot fight for themselves. You’re here. He cannot fight for you as well. And," you say to your hands, “you cannot vanish into thin air, however you try. War will follow.”

“I ran for a long time,” she says, not particularly like she misses it, but like she’s stuck to it, unable to shake it entirely.

You nod.

“Run in the other direction,” Chirrut suggests.

“It’s that easy?” she asks.

“No,” you say. That’s not what he said.

She looks at the two of you hard, frowning. “What will you do?”

You grunt vaguely as Chirrut raises a brow. You haven’t wanted to talk about it and Chirrut has given you time.

“It is undecided,” he replies, finally.

She sighs at that and comes to lean against the console on the other side of Chirrut. “I think I can understand that. …I wouldn’t… _mind_ staying. Altogether.”

“Why should you?” Chirrut says. “Jyn Erso may be a rebel, but she’s found friends and family here, has she not?”

She would never admit to the wetness you see in her eyes. She wipes crossly at her face. “I just– feel like–“ She bites her lip as if she could keep the words back. Her voice is strong, though, when she tries again. Only at the last second does it doubt itself. “Sometimes it feels like I was supposed to have died that day. That all this– I’m not supposed to be here. Do you know what I mean?”

Chirrut leans on his staff and you look away into the lights again.

“That is understandable. Death walked closely that day. But you’re here because you survived, Jyn,” Chirrut says. “Alternative paths are not real, only mirages. The Force doesn’t deal in could-haves, it knew where each of the choices before us led. Your decisions led you here. Do you understand? We must remember not to stall the rest of what we have to live by looking back.” You glance at him, but he’s focussed outward, away from himself. “Death is only one thing. And I believe we all have much more in our future.” 

You think you’re getting rather old for all that passion.

“Even the elderly, such as Baze,” he says. You frown and step lightly on his foot as he smiles.

“With the Rebels.” Her jaw works.

He nods. “Perhaps.”

You remember a familiar Jedhan street now gone, shots, raised voices, and sand suffocating the dry, hot air, a situation not so uncommon, and a woman, a girl, running out to scoop a child to her chest. Kyber heart, Chirrut had said. But where was she before then? Is it so good a life, she wants to go back? No, you think at the look in her eye, the tone even in her voice. She’s not done fighting; she just doesn’t like the Rebels. She doesn’t like them, even though they have done more than she ever could alone.

Well, not that you’re particularly fond either. Where were the Rebels when your city lay dying in the shadow of a Star Destroyer? Off fighting other more important battles, is where, no room for holy caves on a small decaying moon.

“You work better by yourself?” Chirrut asks. 

“You could come with.” She isn’t shy about it, hopeful.

You grunt lowly in dismissal. “We never looked for that life,” you say. Not that you weren’t well suited. Since he was a child, Chirrut has picked the largest, meanest opponents he could find. You were always a little less eager for a beating, but always ready. Then war surged up from the sand and stones of Jedha, brimming over the temple walls and out the gate, taking all within in the flood. “From the start, it was forced on us. We’ve been in this for a long time, I’ve seen what you would do.” You cross your arms that have nowhere to go without your gun, which is still too heavy for you to carry as the medics tell you you’re healing. “On your own. It’s not as true a path as one thinks.”

“You want to stay with them?”

“I didn’t say that. There are good people,” you say, thoughtfully.

“So there are. It’s the decisions the people in charge make that I end up disagreeing with,” she says. “I don’t know if I can really work with them.” For them, she means. In a way, it’s a selfish thing to say, you think, when so many have fought and died for so long. But in these times, selfish can be a confused thing.

Chirrut says after a moment, “Who can say where we need to be? We can only be wary of what voices we heed.”

People begin to speak of a planet called Hoth.

You decide to stay with the Rebellion. Once a guardian, once a beggar, once a revolutionary. A mercenary. A troublemaker. Now what they call a proper rebel. Perhaps this is so. You’re not sure.

You’d known what Chirrut wanted. But unlike other times, in this instance he waited for you to make your choice. Knew what signing on for this long fight entails and that doing so before you did would have been an end to your thoughts on the matter, whichever way you leant. He knows when you need time and you’re grateful.

Chirrut knows what you miss the most are the quiet days in the temple garden. That while he misses those too, he suits this life in ways that you were not born with. He’s always surprisingly strong, taking bigger blows easier than he takes the littler ones. You’re the opposite and you’ve spent a long time fighting. So he was careful. He waited.

You find you’re getting tired of death. You’ve been tired of it, but it’s a pragmatic thing; you’ve always done what you could to live. For whatever reason, you stall after Scarif. Maybe it’s the appearance of choice. Stay and fight, or go and try to find some other place to live out the rest of your days. Maybe it’s because there really is no choice. Maybe it’s because Jedha deserves to be mourned without the sound of blaster fire rending the air.

Unspoken, it is quickly set down that Rogue One prefers to come as a set. This becomes increasingly difficult. 

For awhile it’s all right, fighting alongside people beyond just Chirrut again. It’s different in some ways. In many ways, however, you’ve been here before.

You and Chirrut have your own room on the temple base. It has a cold, stone floor and a heavy curtain. You’re not always there to sleep. You don’t always sleep well.

You two speak at night as you lay down in the dark. It’s different than it once was; your days have reshaped so much, you talk to steady the rhythm of the change: sometimes of your day, where you went, what you saw, the food you ate, the people you spoke to; sometimes of battles, of missions on new planets, of times remembered and lost.

He’ll ask you questions, quietly coaxing details from you. His own come much more easily and you lay silently as he speaks, occasionally prompting, more likely drifting until he asks you a question, or tells you to go to sleep already.

Sometimes you speak of new things, like arguments with Cassian Andor and how frustrating he obviously finds doing so with Chirrut, who, you know, will debate if he disagrees even in the middle of a fight, dodging and striking and disputing orders like a graceful ass; like the way you’re patient with that security droid until you’re not and threaten to take him apart, though K-2SO very succinctly explains that you could not; like the fact that Bodhi Rook can be found sleeping in odd places around the hangar unable to sleep unless he’s caught off guard by it in the middle of working on something; like Jyn Erso not entirely aware that she eyes every ship as if she might need it when things go sour, a hard won compulsion.

Chirrut stays much the same after Scarif. Though for a little while being any distance apart is intolerable. Gradually it passes after night upon night spent curled around each other, confirming with touch what your eyes and ears tell you, that he is alive, that you survived. He’s quiet sometimes, even now. He keeps some things beyond all his talk, still chewing, still feeling. You don’t press.

Eventually, there comes a night when something wakes you, releasing you like a stone into the dark of the room. Chirrut sits on the bed, legs crossed in meditation, as if he went straight to the form out of sleep, so still, except for every few breaths when shudders rack his body. He chants nearly silently beneath his breath.

He knows you’re awake from your breathing and the way you shift. You quietly lay your hand out for him, open and waiting for when he’d like it. Watch the soft, white light play upon his back, across the planes and the place where an explosion on a lost shore took him from you for several helpless breaths. His shape floats, pale in the shadows as he inhales deeply and you keep yours steady, though your heart clenches. The dark minutes pass and then he comes to you all at once, wrapping around you as you breathe each other in. You realize there have been many nights like this when you have not woken up and he has sat here and you hold him tighter.

You get a little bundle of adequately scented incense off a pilot from the Terrabe Sector, who always smells of something sweet and somewhat familiar. Chirrut knows the minute you bring it into your room, of course; he likely smelled it halfway down the hall. When you light it before you sleep however, he seems overcome. It smells close to what it should. 

“Not good?” you ask, concerned.

“It is good,” he swears, before you can put it out. He takes your hands and kisses them. He presses them to his face, stroking your knuckles and the scars and the callouses and the wrinkles written deep.

None of this was the reaction you were anticipating and you flush a little under his attention. But he still does not open his eyes.

Lifting one hand away from his touch, you cup his face, stroking the smooth cheek.

“Chirrut.” _Where does your heart go?_ To Jedha? To Scarif. To the lost world of Aldaraan. To memories, washing like sand, hot on tender soles of feet.

He laughs. When he opens his pale eyes, they are shiny with tears as you knew they would be. “I’m fine. I have become soft in old age that’s all. It had to happen eventually.”

You sigh at him.

“You were always soft,” you grumble, pulling him closer.

“You were always tender.”

You burn the incense every night that you can. Get more from the pilot when it runs low. The longer you burn it the more it gives you dreams that tear at something deep and spacious within you. They are not always dreams of good things. But you keep them safe and near, no matter if the burn of blasters lingers in the back of your throat the next morning. You smell the nights on Chirrut during the day and you know he smells them on you as well, creeping close at times to get a whiff. 

The day Cassian comes back unconscious, rushed without pause to the med bay, K-2SO informing those who stand nearby that it had been a glancing blow from a gundark, but strong enough that he had landed solidly on hard rock, is the day Bodhi decides to fly again, unable as he is to take his eyes away from Andor until he wakes. You admit to being proud of that. The young man from Jedha looks embarrassed by any and all approval or encouragement he receives; he feels guilty that he waited. But, he explains, he was never a very good pilot to begin with. Always average on tests, he says.

Cassian tells him that he’s a rebel now, there is no right way to fly as long as you want to be there. And there are many different ways the Rebellion can use a pilot with Imperial training.

“There is still a test,” he tells Bodhi with a toothy smile. “You have to keep it in the air, you know.”

Bodhi keeps it in the air. He passes on his first run. It becomes more impossible to keep track of them all. You think of all the young initiates at the Kyber temple and you remind yourself that for all that they were together, they were not safe.

As much as you can, you stay with Chirrut. That much has not, will never change again. But there occur at least a few inescapable times working with the Rebellion that you two think thoughts, breathe air on different planets. You dislike it. Neither does Chirrut enjoy it. You saw his death on Scarif and it took something with it before it left: any patience for life without him.

Homecoming after this sort is charged and, you find, rather understated. It’s preferable if you’re back to Yavin 4 before him. You try to wait for Chirrut by the door on these days, where you can quickly relocate he and yourself with little time for lingering in the hangar, time for him to lean over in the middle of all of it, guileless as the enlightened, so near you feel the pleasing, compromising flush of having gone so long without him creep over your ears, as he suggests, grinning, something decidedly indecent to you. 

This probably inspires most of the vague rumors you hear about the two Jedhan Guardians. Fortunately enough, the others come from those that have seen either of you fighting.

When he waits for you, he does not make it easy. Either he is somewhere impossible to find, or right outside the hatch door, leaning against something he shouldn’t be, looking serene for all that you are probably tired and filthy. 

There isn’t much that’s a greater relief than the sight of him patiently listening to the bodies traveling around him, waiting as you disembark. The part of your mind reserved for him quiets down the shorter the line between you becomes. He’ll reach out when you’re near and keep his hand on you.

However you find each other, there is usually only one end in sight, whether you get Chirrut safely behind closed doors first, or not. Today, it’s manageable and you arrive at your rooms, the dirt of another world in the grooves of the bottoms of your boots.You drop your gun and cooling system off your back and set them in their place on the floor with a relieved grunt. Chirrut helps you quietly and you let him, removing the armor from your shoulders and placing it out of the way, unstrapping the power cells on your chest and your belt with its many pockets. Then you lean down to unbuckle your boots and step out of them, scooting them to the wall. 

You’re lighter than air now. All that’s left is to shake the dust away. A shower would do it, but the refresher seems, currently, a long ways away.

Chirrut stays in your space, close enough to feel his warmth, see the faint sheen on his brow the constant humidity of this place gives rise to.

“Welcome back,” he says conversationally as if he weren’t calmly and with intent crowding you in the small entrance. You’re quite content to let him. 

You have trouble coming up with words to reply. You’re tired, you ache deeply, watching his face suddenly so close. There are times, maudlin, when you think of what you wouldn’t give to just have him somewhere quiet and yours, where you could set pain down for awhile. No need for protecting what you love with guns and strength, always ready for a war to come down around you. In a way, it’s too close to how you thought a long time ago, when you felt something protecting you. It’s not nostalgia. You more pity that fool in your past than you envy him, the optimist. But it’s true that since Scarif, you’ve been drawn a little by old thoughts.

Your fingers wrap around his waist and he’s propelled closer by the touch, a line of contemplation puckering between his brows. His hand reaches up as if of its own mind, drawing you in. It hovers about the side of your neck until you lean into it, shivering at the contact.

His calloused hands hold and stroke your face to see you better, to see where the days apart have led you. You close your eyes, his familiar touch affecting you easily today as if you were a man dying of thirst, which you will never say aloud to him. His head is big enough and besides, he knows you plenty well to understand this.

“I missed you,” you say, attempting not to hold his waist too tightly. He seems to consider this, as if he could read the past days with only your expression to go on.

“Shall I admit to it as well?” he asks lightly, rotating his head. You see he is testing the edges of the atmosphere, your mood.

You raise your brows, hovering around a small, fond smile. “By all means, don’t let me force your hand.”

He tugs your beard gently, tilting back. “I missed you,” he announces, expression serious.

“That is good,” you say, nodding, ignoring the slightly powerless feeling that comes with those words. You stroke the line of his throat.

“Is it? It seemed a very long time.” And he drags you closer.

You press him back into the wall, him half-leading you, your fingers firmly clutching his hips. Your lips find the soft corner of his jaw, his hands tangling in your hair.

“Tell me of your trip to Aquilae,” he says just loud enough to reach you, but still steady-toned. His pulse beats through his skin to your lips as he tips his head for you. He inhales audibly when your teeth scrape below his ear.

“Uneventful.”

“It was a different Baze Malbus whose black eye I heard the pilots speak of, then. Who knew there could be more than one.” His fingers pull your ear, then smooth your hair from your face, then deftly, carefully seek the tender skin beneath your eyes. As if it’s his own bruise– and he’s unable to leave it alone. “It wasn’t as peaceful as they anticipated?”

You hum against his skin, turning your face into his hand. “It was quite a peaceful trip, Chirrut,” you say.

“No complications,” he prompts. 

“No.”

“No troopers.”

“No, of course.”

“No bandits?” His thumb traces your mouth, dipping into the meat of your lower lip.

“None that bothered us,” you say, watching his expression, how his eyes focus without anything to see. The look prickles with heat. As you speak the tender skin of your lips brushes against his thumb.

“No mad banthas in your path?”

“There was the one,” you say, sighing tiredly, pressing him closer to the wall and leaning your temple to his. “But he was very small.”

His hands never leave you, one about your neck, stroking and kneading, the other still mapping your face as if checking to see that everything is in its place. You take pleasure in the way his chest rises and falls against yours.

“Where is this from then?” he asks, correctly fixing on the bruised eye. He waits through your silence, smiling in surprise when you attempt to distract him by kissing his palm. “Misdirection.”

You sigh loudly, leaning back. “It’s nothing important.”

“So why not tell me if it’s not important,” he says as if he weren’t grinning, fingers chasing your skin.

“What are we doing here?” you complain, without conviction. “I wonder if you’re confused. Should we move to the bed if you’re uncertain?”

But you’re finding it ridiculously difficult to pull away from him. Or to direct this toward the bed you share. You’re finding it difficult to do anything but whatever you can to keep him exactly where he is.

He raises his arms to his sides, which makes his point clear enough. “How could I move anything? Look, Baze, something has pinned me to the wall,” he informs you, as if you should do something about it.

“And what could that be, but your devoted lover?” you ask.

The smile he gives you is staggering and you lean in again, brushing your lips against his. He stills, hands fisting in your suit.

“Missed you,” you repeat, breathed into the space between your lips, unsure of what else you could say to express the feeling. He pulls you in, gently. As in all things that Chirrut takes the time to practice, he kisses you with no small amount of focus, as if he could lead out all your secrets by the soft touch of his tongue. Times like this you’re inclined to believe him.

For all that you pinned him to a wall, he breathes deeply enough when you pull back, his lips parted and pink, eyes lidded. You enjoy the flush that comes to his cheeks, as well. You have never in your life tired of his face, known it longer than any other save your own. He cups your cheek, thumbnail scratching your beard, and bites his lip.

His other hand returns again to comb through your hair. He enjoys the texture. Tugging gently as he goes, it elicits a small, lingering grunt from your chest.

“My lover, you say?” he asks as he begins nosing his way along your jaw.

He pulls you forward so that you must lean an arm against the wall and tilts your head to the side as he mouths with teeth down the side of your neck. Your throat clicks and your thumb rubs circles into his hip. His breath ghosts out before his wet, sharp kisses, spilling down beneath the open collar of your suit. This is turning out to be more torture than unwinding. Unsurprisingly. 

His hand slips down your chest, searching, splaying across your stomach, as his bite finds one sensitive spot beneath your collar. Your breath catches and he chases the sound, unerringly. You kiss his temple, his jaw, the nape of his neck. Run your hands down his back, then up, come around to pull at Chirrut’s robes. 

The same idea strikes him and he begins to draw your shoulders from your suit, grasping and smoothing over your skin and your undershirt as he does. You move back, but not too far from his warmth, to allow him to tug your arms free and lower the cloth to your waist. You lean your head against his temple as he moves, watching his expression, breathing deeply into each other’s air. You kiss him once and he follows for more, demanding. When you release a slow building rumble, he grips you tighter.

He is without his tech today and so it is a simpler matter to pull the wrap about his torso free. You let the stark black and red fall to the floor, leaving him in his black robes and trousers. Kissing his throat, you slip a hand up beneath the robes to find his skin and he sucks in a breath– and then braces his hands on your shoulders as you slide a leg between his, arching with a surprised, pleased gasp. 

“Ah. That lover,” he says, rather breathless as your mouth dips into what’s reachable of the hollow of his collarbone.

“‘ _That_ lover?’” you exclaim. You huff, running your hand over his chest, thumb catching his nipple and pulling a short hiss and a twitch from him. “What nonsense.”

“Have you met him? He has an enormous–“ Your hands slide down to his thighs and gently hitch him higher up the wall, slotting him closer to you, wrenching another gasp from him as your hands grip his ass and for a moment his feet leave the floor, “– _gun_.”

“Comfortable?” 

He hums affirmative, shortly, swallowing, palming your neck, squirming as your thigh presses against his length. You appreciate the distracted way he bites his lip. 

“You know,” you say, as Chirrut sits heavy and hot along your thigh, “my legs are quite sturdy from hauling that big gun around for so long.”

He traces your ear, a slight tremor thrumming through him.

“You don’t say?”

His leg not trapped wraps around you, pulling your hips together the rest of the way and you both groan into a soft kiss, for all that it is heated, as you grind against him. He breathes shakily into your mouth, clutching your neck, your back, your shirt wrenching up, his leg straining around your upper thigh.

“I should– thank you for coming fully _equipped_ –”

You sigh around a tired laugh, hot and overworked and hard against Chirrut’s length. “You’re still talking? I must be getting rusty.” You squeeze his hips.

His hand comes around to feel your mouth and he smirks, flushed and riding your leg as he is. “Not tired, are you?” he asks mock-concerned between deep breaths, as if asking whether you’d like to take a break from sparring.

You are so very tired after four days gone. And he’s not doing your body any favors, warm and encouraging as he is. The way his brow quirks, challenging. He’s impossible. You know you don’t care how tired you are.

“Not yet,” you tell him, squeezing his ass. He exhales sharply.

“Good,” he says, smiling, which is a sign if ever there was one.

Bracing himself on your shoulders and around your hip, he pushes away from the wall and swings his other leg around your waist, ankles locking. You grunt, catching him against you and then pressing him back again. He holds himself up without your help, of course, strong legs tight around you, and your hands roam over his slim hips and shoulders. You groan into the warmth of his chest.

“Showoff,” you grunt appreciatively as he chuckles and leans in to nose along your face to your ear, kissing it lightly, lips then teeth slipping out.

Grinding into his heat, you shudder. He gasps and tries to catch his breath. You don’t let him, making him arch into you. You trail kisses down his neck, fighting with his robes to push them entirely up to his shoulders, revealing his chest. You kiss him there as well and the _noise_ he makes is _very_ encouraging. 

His hands ghost between you, yanking your undershirt over your head as you lean him against the wall. Then they trail across your bare chest, smoothing, mapping, seeing, then slipping lower, beneath your jumpsuit. You groan loudly into his neck and press against him as he palms your length. Your breath comes in sharp exhales.

“Are you sure you won’t tell me where that black eye came from?”

You sigh, again, heavily, around the hint of a groan. He is speaking entirely too much. You can feel how hard he himself is against your stomach. You bite and kiss his neck urgently and his throat works around a shaky sigh.

“Chirrut,” you say. His hands are long and strong around your cock. 

“You won’t tell me?” he breathes. _Damn_ the man. 

You curse and grumble loudly, leaning back from him, leaving you connected at the waist and nowhere else as the wall supports his back. You rub down the hard length in his trousers. He thrusts unabashedly into your hand. 

“No? You won’t say?” he gasps. One hand leaves you to brace himself against the wall. You kiss the corner of his mouth as you grasp him beneath the hem and gently, firmly stroke him with the knowledge and experience of the right places to pull. His legs go slack for a moment and he scrambles to right himself. “ _Baze_ ,” he sighs as you kiss him sweetly, still stroking him, “you fight dirty.”

You snort and laugh at that and he kisses you for it. “You seem to have all day to finish this,” you breathe, pulling him and then yourself from the cloth and into the air warm with body heat.

“You seem– to have forgotten the lubrication,” he pushes out around small gasps as you grind a little against him.

“How could I forget when I have only just returned?” you ask, stilling, because you realize that you have and it is in a bedside drawer.

“I cannot think of everything.”

“It’s by the bed,” you say.

“Yes,” he agrees. Then he takes your hand in his and licks a long, thick stripe up your palm before sucking three fingers between his plush lips. You watch helplessly. He releases you with a small smile.

“ _I_ fight dirty,” you exclaim.

“So do I.”

He grins, face flushed, and pulls you close once again. He kisses you and you groan, wrapping your slick hand around your cocks. There was time you remember when Chirrut was horrible at kissing. But that time passed. His mouth slides over yours, then suddenly stills as you begin stroking and thrusting against him into the ring of your fingers, ripping a gravel filled moan from him. The sound alone nearly kills your heart. You grind into him, his legs compelling you on as you duck your head against his soft, taut throat.

His hands tug your hair, grapple with your shoulders, unable to find more friction against the wall as he is. His robes are still shucked up about his chest and your skin presses to his warm body as you kiss him and kiss him. The small motions of his hips stutter when your hand grips his bare ass. His legs loosen again and you hold him tight.

You kiss his face. His cheeks, his temple, his forehead, the corner of his soft mouth.

“Bed, Baze,” he says. You agree, completely. “I can hear your legs complain from here.”

“You hear what you like,” you mumble, taking him from the wall as he asked and to the bed, stepping out of your jumpsuit as you do. “My strong legs are fine, it’s yours that can’t hold you up.” 

“They work hard.”

You lay him on his back, lean over him as you reach into the bedside drawer. He trails a hand along your neck, across your shoulder, and down your chest, lower. You hiss a breath out, his slender fingers wrapping around you. Looking over, you pause, realizing how you’ve rather disheveled him.

“That’s a good look on you,” you say softly, sitting back on your knees. His hand slips away and you reach out to grasp it once before working the lid of the lube open.

“I wouldn’t know,” he says, stroking up your thighs as they rest between his legs. He rotates his head. “Is it the clothes?”

You hum, lowly.

He surges up, pushing you back with a hand to your chest as he sits in your lap. He raises a brow, for all that he’s flushed and pressing a hot line against your stomach, attempting to look as if he has merely a passing curiosity. “Or the way my body begs for you?”

You exhale unsteadily, clutching his arched back between your hands, and he doesn’t bother to hide his smile. You shake your head, looking at him. “Your mouth,” you mutter, fighting a losing battle with your body temperature.

“Do you like it? You can have it,” he says, leaning his forehead against yours. You swallow before kissing him deeply. The clothes you were enjoying, now become a hindrance. You both hurry to finally rid yourselves of them, until you’re completely bare to each other.

As you begin to move together, you both come apart, pushing toward the edge, sliding slick into your hand. He spreads his thighs and leans over your shoulders, cradling your head in his arms, breathing into your air.

The pressure builds until you’re laying Chirrut back again, thrusting into his hands as he moans beneath you, gasping with each drag. You drop a slick finger between his cheeks and press in and his breath catches. He pushes against the bed as he comes loose, choking as you keep dragging against him, but not relaxing his hold around you as he rides out the last of it. 

“Baze,” he breathes over and over, and that’s enough. You groan and cover him as your hips stutter, spilling wetly onto your stomachs. He kisses your temple as you breathe together. Your chests rise and fall in sync, hearts thudding an indecipherable pattern. He kisses your lips when you lift your face to him.

He kisses you again as you roll tiredly onto your back, pulling him with you. You hold him closely as he strokes your hair, letting your mind drift without thought beyond the emotion in your heart. Chirrut goes and comes back with a wet cloth.

He resettles into the crook of your neck, leg draped across you, your arms around him, your cheek pressed to his close cropped hair.

“Your body begs for me?” you murmur, sweat cooling on your skin.

Chirrut smirks easily against your throat. “It wouldn’t need to beg if yours didn’t take so long.”

“ _Who_ takes so long?”

He hums, pleased. “It was the same one who shook the bed so tremendously.”

“It was the one that can’t stop talking,” you say. “Chirrut Îmwe." 

“Sure, sure, it’s as you say.”

“It is as I say,” you reply.

“Such a strong, _old_ warrior,” he says, lowly, swatting your hand when you pinch him. He stretches against you and you enjoy the way his muscles flex. “So master warrior, how did you come by that bruised eye?”

You blink slowly, letting some of the past few days come back to you, keeping this moment as a buffer between you and your thoughts. You stroke his smooth shoulder. “You’re so worried?”

He taps against your collarbone. “You’re so unwilling?” he replies, lightly, but he sounds bothered by something. Perhaps the way you came back to him so needful. He’s searching for the thorn that reached beneath your skin, so far that you would bleed enough for him to see. However, you’re reluctant to dip back into it.

You sigh. At least this is easer to talk about.

“It was Bodhi. His hand slipped on a rifle strap. Knocked me in the face.”

Chirrut laughs and you feel his breath trail down your chest.

“Good aim,” he says, leaning up, smiling in your direction.

“If only he were so skilled with the other end,” you say, not unkindly.

This makes him laugh harder, gums showing. “True. He is better in a starship.”

“Chirrut, it hurts and you’re laughing,” you complain, something too fond to describe in your chest. You try to keep the smile from your voice.

“You should try it. May it brighten such a sour face,” Chirrut says, waving a hand. It darts out and pinches your cheek, so that you know that he knew your expression even if you tried to hide it. You protest and snatch his hand.

“I said it hurts,” you tell him, not releasing him. “And what is the first thing you do?”

You allow Chirrut to turn his hand in yours and lace them together. You sigh, like an old fool. His thumb strokes yours and you imagine for a moment, all is well. You close your eyes. He pulls you and you roll over him, pressing your nose to his temple, his smooth, hard body welcoming you. You feel it rush through you, lapping like waves, and think, it’s not so hard: all is well.

You’re caught off guard by the feeling sometimes, its sudden eruption. After how long and how hard you’ve fought to protect the peace found in such quiet moments. You breathe in the lengthening shadow of the Rebellion, for all that you arrived here after NiJedha, your city, fell. After your planet had been knocked to its knees. Your soul, already scarred enough, has a toughened skin– but this grief is more than you thought you could ever know. 

You imagine, sometimes, when you’re in a particular bad mood, what went through their minds on the planetkiller before they took the shot. Jedha had become a fossil to most. Without use beyond Imperial interest in its caves. You doubt they had a thought more for the city, its people, than that. No, of course. A dying resource with dwindling worth. And like Scarif after it, Jedha now lays asleep in a blanket of ash. You think you could never bear to see it now.

Is it relief you find here? Hard to say.

You lay there around him, so that your arms might shelter him, letting the feeling pass, wash back, though your heart pounds surprisingly hard. You hold each other, knowing the protection of arms around you, the only kind one should trust to do its job. Skin and bones cannot stand to a blast, but it does well against the night.

You sigh at yourself, at all of it, lean back and cup the nape of his neck, giving you both room to breathe. Still, his hands never leave you. He is very patient with you, your Chirrut.

“I told Jyn that she would never understand the pain of it,” you say, quietly.

It hangs there as you knew it would, a slightly ugly thing. You told her this on your away mission trading with the small, wealthy band of Aquilaians, who have never known a struggle harder than which side of the war to set their money on. Jyn told you that she knew how you felt when you looked at them. You hadn’t meant for it to strike as hard as it did, your words in response expanding out like unfolding paper. Chirrut waits as you explain, to his credit, rubbing the end of one of your braids between his fingers.

“She’s lived a different life. Even on the run,” you say, watching his hand. “Always looking over your shoulder. As if Jedha was just beyond your sight. I ran to find relief. But it’s in the bones. It was always waiting there, waiting for me to return. Waiting for war to finish tearing it from me. Could she understand how long it took for the Empire to drag its corpse away? How long we struggled to revive it?”

“She lost her home and ran from memories half her life,” Chirrut points out.

“I know. Is it the same?” you ask him.

“I’m not disagreeing with you. Was it an argument, then?”

You look over his shoulder at nothing. “She let it rest. For the best probably.”

You might wish she had said something though, as it is you feel as if you’ve somehow left a conversation half-finished. Her expression told you Jyn was instantly contrite, but she said nothing when you’d finished speaking and your momentum quickly fled. The entire thing left a weight in your chest. It was near the end of your return flight. In the hours since, you’ve seen little of her.

“Give it time. You have much in common– she’s used to getting along with you. I expect she’ll come find you soon,” Chirrut encourages, in that certain way. His fingers touch and cup your face, drawing your attention back. “A smart man doesn’t let these things build up.”

“A smart man wouldn’t have said them at all,” you mutter, half-believing it. You lean into him.

He pats your cheek. “That’s not true. No turning back! You’re only saying that now because you see yourself in her, gives you greater empathy.”

No, you think, the longer you know her the more you see Chirrut. Her will to fight. Need for it. It’s in her doubt you see yourself. In the way she moves around people dear to her, as if they might be snapped up and she left alone with her grief. The longer you think on it, the worse it feels. Though Chirrut’s right; you don’t truly regret what you said.

You wish it had gone a different way. Of late your thoughts have been caught and tugged by the past like a flag in the wind. It’s not an entirely enjoyable experience. Away from Chirrut, Jyn’s comments and attitude hit deeper than usual. But if there were words to be had, you’d have preferred it’d not been lecturing a woman you trust surrounded by fools you did not.

“This is a good thing,” Chirrut tells you. “Through knowing her, you were allowed to say what you meant. Is it so awful that she should see herself clearer? See Baze Malbus as a son of NiJedha, Holy City, where he was born, where he learned love and pain, where he fought and lived?”

“No, I suppose,” you say.

“You see,” he agrees.

“You’re riled up,” you say to gently tease him. “There’s no fight here in bed with us.”

“I’m not riled up,” he says, waving a hand. “Calm down." 

“I am calm.”

“We’re both calm,” he says. He traces the shape of your smile. You close your eyes. “I’m glad you told me. You were tense when you arrived,” he informs you as if you didn’t know. You take his fingers and hold them to your lips.

“I do the worrying,” you rumble.

“You do your worrying. I do mine.”

You hum.

“I should thank her, I suppose,” Chirrut says, casually. “If speaking your mind is what got me to such a good orgasm.”

A flush creeps over your ears as he intended. You don’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction. “Your mouth is blunt enough to knock a man over.”

“I apologize. It was your doing, I should thank you.”

“I like that better.”

“I thought you would.”

Still, his hands never leave you. 

Later, when the day has moved on to night and Chirrut has pillowed your head on his wiry arm, his warm breath plastering your hair to your skin, your fingers locked with his, you find yourself waking to silence. You’re unbearably hot with his inextinguishable heat pressed along your back. You slide out from his arm and get a cool glass of water.

You might wish for a window to give the small unit a breath of air. But then, you’ve seen the bugs this planet has to offer, so perhaps no window is better. You finish the glass of water. You place it to be cleaned. You stand quietly in the room. Sitting, briefly hesitant, you face the place on the floor that Chirrut usually meditates on.

Your legs and hands know the way and find their places easily. The rest of you moves a little slower, though you’re not out of practice. You meditate still, daily if you like. This doesn’t have to be a religious act, has never been exclusively one. That was perhaps once a way to explain why you’d stopped the practice after the Temple of the Whills fell and all that was left of your faith was so much smoke from a snuffed candle. The last decade or so though, it doesn’t bring echoes with it anymore, that’d once warded you off from the pain of memory and the anger of silent betrayal.

Anticipation twists low in your stomach, so much like unease. You breathe it out.

You settle in, inhale, bones coming together to sit you upright, exhale, thoughts leveling out and out. Conscious action reels itself in behind ribs, hovers about the center, the heart. The edge of sleep keeps close, but the night drifts farther away. Time passes for awhile.

He begins. _The Force is with me. I am one with the Force._

You finish, the reverse.

You haven’t spoken the words since Scarif. Which had been the first time they’d touched your lips in something like two decades. When their shape begins to roll through you now, it draws your eyes open, blinking through the dark to where Chirrut would sit.

Later, the morning moves on. You progress through the active flow of a temple hallway, busy in the Rebellion’s preparation to relocate to the ice planet Hoth. At least you’ll be out of this damned humidity. You shift into Chirrut’s space and get a whiff of his robes where something sweet and almost familiar lingers.

You wade through it. The night passes closely, as if tangible. You realize after awhile that he’s taken your hand, holding it firmly in his calloused palm.

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from the mitski song, I Will, which i found retroactively appropriate.
> 
> if anyone would like to correct my bs science in the first paragraph, please feel free to give me more space facts. also would really love to hear what you thought about this thing i wrote because it’s my first on this site?? and it kinda somehow ate up a month of my life :o
> 
> you know, can i just say, honestly, tbh, in all honesty, i kept thinking, “man, i should end this sexy scene soon.” how exactly the heck does s e x even work tho for real. we just don’t know......
> 
> ok, thanks i love you, bye <3


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